Dylan ‘Envoy’ Hannon is a star Call of Duty League player for the Chicago Huntsmen and, as it turns out, an audiophile iconoclast—as discovered during the CDL’s Seattle Surge Home Series.
Gamers are no strangers to inverted controls, as every game allows for options that suit certain players’ personal preferences. Early FPS titles like Goldeneye and Medal of Honor utilized an inverted Y-Axis, and those habits persist for a minority of gamers today.
But it appears that Envoy has taken inverted to a whole new level, as his peer, the Dallas Empire’s James ‘Clayster’ Eubanks discovered while watching the CDL tournament on May 23: The Huntsmen star apparently plays Call of Duty with his headset on backwards—hearing things on his right in-game through his left ear in real life.
Does this dude @DylanEnvoy have his Astros on backwards? LMAOOOO pic.twitter.com/BcLiOo20r6
— Clayster (@Clayster) May 23, 2020
This information is new to much of the CoD community and, understandably, pretty shocking. When you’re approaching Envoy from the right, his left ear registers those footsteps but his brain understands that the movement is on his right side. It’s a psychological masterpiece, a testament to the human brain’s habituation.
In response to Clayster, he explained the history of this bizarre habit: “Dude, I never knew I was wearing my headset backwards when I was a child and ever since I started com I just had to wear it that way ‘cause I can’t get used to the normal way.”
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dude I never knew I was wearing my headset backwards when I was a child and ever since I started comp I just had to wear it that way cause i cant get used to the normal way. Worst part is that on some PC games like CS I have to wear the normal way idgi tbh
— Envoy (@DylanEnvoy) May 23, 2020
Making things even more confusing, it appears that there are certain games in which he does not have this proclivity toward inverted audio—as he mentions that he has to wear his headset “the normal way” when playing PC titles like Counter Strike.
While this information is new to much of the CoD scene, it’s long been known by Envoy’s teammates and fans, to the extent that his Twitch stream even features a “!headsetstory” command that will prompt Nightbot to explain that his brain has simply “adjusted to inverted audio” and that the professional beamer is just “weird.”
Many might wonder how cracked Envoy’s gameplay could be if he switched to wearing his headset the normal way.
But the Huntsmen are 12-4 overall and 2-0 in the Seattle series thus far, so fans will probably just want to trust his brain for now.